such small
circumference. Thank you. Do you go to the Deacon's?"

"Yes."

"So do I."

We walked on together in silence, till we reached our journey's end,--I
too tired, he too reserved, too preoccupied, or too shy, to speak again;
but when, at last, we were seated with our cigars on the Deacon's
door-step, he turned suddenly to me and asked,--

"Are you fond of the country?"

"Why, yes! What else is there?" I answered, laughing.

"Ah, you are an artist!"

"I hope to be one."

"Its a bad business," said he, testily,--"a very bad business. If I were
you, I would give it up."

"Have you ever tried it?"

"Tried it?" he ejaculated, kicking the gravel-walk,--"yes, and
everything else, I believe. If I thought it would do you any good, I
would give you the benefit of my experience; but you'd only laugh, and
make a good story of it to your wife."

"Alas! I have no such incumbrance."

"The worse for you, if you have genius and the modesty of genius. A true
artist, who seeks to interpret Nature in its purest and most exquisite
relations, who penetrates the deepest temples of the woods and the
silent sanctuaries of the mountains, must be a true, pure, and good man.
He must be a happy man,--happy in a sweet and natural way. A man whose
life is passed in a daily delight that gently stirs without feverish
excitement will be tender and most lovely to women. He _ought_ to
marry."

"Did you ever write poetry?" I asked.

"I began to compose when I was six years old. I wrote a poem on the sea,
commencing,--

'O thou earthly sea,
Every person thinks of thee,--
The sailor, and the busy bee,
And the Chinese drinking tea!'

I thought it very fine. I have written many things since then, and they
seemed good to me at the time. I would not venture to say how they
struck others."

He smiled pleasantly.

"Do not be frightened by the shadow of a possible wife from unfolding
your history," said I. "Chance has thrown us together; befriend me with
your experience."

"Take warning, then, if need be.

"In college I was thought 'a very able fellow,' one 'who held the pen of
a ready writer'; and I graduated as vain of my supposed talents as a
young miss of her first conquest.

"My earliest literary essay was in a new magazine, which, as it was just
rising into notice, would be, I imagined, greatly assisted by my
condescension. It was a charity, indeed, to give my support to this
fledgling, and I sent to it a long ar